‘Why kill her at home?’

HAD Louis Mahony planned to kill his wife, why would he strike her in the head with an iron in the couple’s own yard in full view of “busy body” neighbours, his barrister has asked.

In his closing address to the jury, barrister Phil Hardcastle asked if his client intended to kill Lainie Coldwell he could have easily done it on one of their regular fishing trips to the Northern Territory “where crocodiles roam”.

There was also the Warrego River near their Charleville home and plenty of bush areas, he submitted.

His client claimed to have found Lainie, 36, at the foot of a gum tree in the front yard of their then home at 11 Walter St, Charleville, with a serious head injury on the afternoon of August 23, 2009.

Mahony, now 44, assumed his de facto wife of 18 years had fallen from the tree while removing party lights.

However, the Crown accused the ex-policeman of killing his wife and staging the scene to look like a fall from the tree.

Mr Hardcastle said from the start it was accepted Lainie had fallen from the tree until the insurance policies came to light and then “it was all about murder”.

He reminded the jury that pathologists and biomechanical experts had conceded that, in isolation, Lainie’s head injury could have been caused by a fall from the tree but they had expected to see injuries to her neck, torso and limbs which she didn’t have.

But Mr Hardcastle said people did survive accidents all the time relatively unscathed.

“It’s not an improbability that she was up that tree and it’s not an improbability that she slipped and fell,” he said.

The closing addresses will continue today.